


Unsent Letters

by Wallwalker



Category: Star Ocean: The Second Story
Genre: Community: 5trueloves, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just a way to cope with everything, he told himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsent Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Five True Loves](http://community.livejournal.com/5trueloves) community at LiveJournal. (Prompt: Secret.)

Leon keeps a box of unsent letters under his bed.

He hasn't told anyone about it, although he supposes that his Mama knows that something is up. Surely she noticed that her old stationary box went missing a long time ago, anyway. He'd snagged it back when he was a kid, and now he's keeping it under his bed, tied up with a long piece of twine. It's filled almost to the brim with pieces of paper in white envelopes, all of them addressed to the same person.

It's a way that he has of coping with the stress of life in the laboratory, ever since he came back from Energy Nede and realized that he couldn't always carry the whole world on his twelve-year-old shoulders after all. When he's stressed out, he'll sit down and write a letter about it. When he's happy, he'll write a letter with all of the things he couldn't tell his parents. When he's afraid, he'll confide; when he's confident, he'll boast.

Every single letter is addressed to Rena, because really, who else would he tell these secrets to? There are things in those letters that he wouldn't even admit to Big Brother Claude, a lot of things... more than he thought he even had. Maybe it's because he still has that silly crush on her... or maybe it's something else. As much as he hates to admit it, he really knows nothing about this sort of thing. Sometimes he thinks about actually sending a letter via messenger to Arlia, just to ask if she knows - or at least to ask her if she's ever done the same thing.

He always reconsiders, though, and puts the letter in the stationary box with the rest of them, never to be sent.

\---

Leon is seventeen when he finally keeps his promise to visit Arlia someday; he grew up fast, lost much of his sweet childishness. He's all angles and lines now, slightly gawky in a lab coat that finally fits him properly.

He finds himself telling her about the letters a couple of days after he arrived there. He didn't know what he was trying to accomplish, though. Maybe it was that old crush coming back again. He didn't know, didn't like not knowing.

When he finishes, she smiles. "I'll be right back," she says, and runs upstairs.

When she comes back, she's carrying a stationary box, tied with a ribbon. When she opens it, Leon can see that it's filled to the brim with faded pieces of paper and envelopes, all of them marked with his name. She smiles sheepishly at Leon, and says, "I bet you don't have as many of these as I do, do you?"

Leon smiles back just as sheepishly. "Seems pretty close to me," he answers.


End file.
